1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus, in a digital photographic service for recording information to order printing of image data, a method and an apparatus for receiving this information, a printing method and a printing apparatus for reproducing the image data as printed images, and a computer-readable recording medium which records a program for executing these methods.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a digital photographic service in which photographic prints are generated from image data, an order placing method wherein a user provides a laboratory or the like with the content of the order, such as the quantity of the prints, in the form of digital data has been known.
Some digital cameras have a function to set the print quantity or necessity of printing. Such a camera sets this information by recording it in a memory of the camera as a portion of tag information added to image data. In this case, a user can order printing by providing a laboratory or the like with the digital camera itself whose memory holds image data and its tag information added thereto or with another recording medium wherein. the image data have been recorded.
Furthermore, another method wherein an order file separated from the image data and describing the content of the order alone is provided to the laboratory has also been known. In this method, in the case where image data have been stored in the laboratory or the like, only the order file needs to be provided. Therefore, it is suitable for the case where the amount of data to be transferred is preferably reduced, such as the case where orders are placed via a network. Furthermore, by separating the order file from image data, the location of the image data can be indicated by the order file, which leads to more freedom of storage location.
In the method wherein the content of an order is added to image data, in order to automatically receive the order and to carry out printing by a printer in a laboratory, it is necessary to set a storage location (directory) in a recording medium from which the printer reads the image data and to store the printing target image data in this predetermined directory. This recording medium is then provided to a laboratory. For example, when a plurality of directories exist in a recording medium, it is necessary for a certain directory to be a directory from which a printer reads image data, and image data need to be stored in this directory when an order is placed.
Meanwhile, because of the spread of large capacity removable recording media such as ZIP discs and MO discs, the number of image data sets which can be recorded within a single recording medium has been increased. Therefore, there is a need for storing image data under a plurality of directories. For example, customers wish to store image data classified by events, such as photographs taken on a trip and at an athletic meeting, or classified by types of cameras by which image data have been obtained.
In such a case, in the method wherein the content of an order is added to image data, it is necessary to store image data only in a predetermined directory designated by aprinter. Therefore, it is necessary to place an order to a laboratory after image data having been stored in a plurality of directories are moved into the predetermined directory. Thus, ordering prints is thus very troublesome.
Furthermore, since the content of an order needs to be specified separately for each image data set in this method, a request to make a composite photograph by using a plurality of image data sets cannot be met.
Meanwhile, in the method generating an order file, the location of image data storage can be specified in an order file, if the location of an order file storage or a directory is predetermined. Therefore, a need for customers to store image data according to a classification, as has been described above, can be met. Furthermore, since image data are separated from the content of an order, printing of a composite photograph specifying a plurality of image data sets can be dealt with.
However, in this method, it is necessary that all images are displayed and confirmed after they have been photographed, in order to decide whether or not the images are to be printed. Furthermore, in this method, since the content of a printing order regarding a plurality of image data sets is described in one file, the order file size is not known before the file is actually generated. As a result, a problem sometimes occurs such that an order file cannot be generated in an environment wherein the capacity of a memory is restricted.